The Playmakers Podcast is by and for game industry professionals, and approaches our field from both creative and business perspectives.

Each episode, I sit down with one of the great minds in the game industry to discuss topics such as Narrative Design, Monetization, and Creative Direction. The topics vary but the goal is always the same: to uncover actionable info you can use to be more successful in your games. Everything from pre-production tactics, career management, how to make a hit Kickstarter campaign, and much more.

In this episode, Marc provides some of the best advice for job hunting in the gaming industry. We talk about utilizing a professional LinkedIn profile and resume, how to strategize your career management and long term growth strategy plan, in addition, behavioral interview techniques that will benefit you, especially when interviewing for your dream job.

In this episode, Adrian talks about his passion for the gaming industry and how his company has worked with over 100+ clients, including many of the leading mobile and social game companies with full-blown design audit with priorities on retention and monetization to set them up for success.

In this episode Gordon explains the transition from designer to a business developer and the value of "the curse of gab" and how as a developer, you have to possess effective communication about why things matter and what's at stake in the game experience that you are creating with showing empathy for fellow developers.

In this episode, we discuss the roles, responsibilities, and characteristics of a great creative director, the process of team communication and moral and, the importance of always keeping production moving forward.

In this episode, we discuss the design process, especially as it pertains to preproduction on casual games. Listen to learn why he encourages bad code and art early in the process and many of the tactics he brings to bear in order to achieve "fun" fast.

In this episode, Alfonzo provides insight on the misconception within the game industry about UX. He asserts how critical UX/UI is to the success of any game. You can have the best game design in the world and it can look wonderful, but if people can’t access UX, you’ve missed on your product.

Eric Zimmerman is deeply embedded in New York Game scene. In this episode, Eric explains how he designed Gamelabs to be a place where people who worked there felt ownership and authorship of the intellectual property that they were creating.

Ed is an award-winning writer who has worked with Twisted Pixel Games, Uber Entertainment and Telltale Games. In this interview, Ed shares his own story as well as the powerful narrative frameworks that he finds consistently useful in crafting great in-game tales. This includes the "7 Steps" of a story and white-boarding stories starting from the story's end, not the beginning.

Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer and voice actor. He is the co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants and is best known for creating the Oddworld series including Abe's Oddysee, Abe's Exoddus, Munch's Oddysee, Stranger's Wrath and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!. He is currently working on Oddworld: Soulstorm.

In part 1 of our 2 part interview, Lorne presents his path growing into the role of an artist as a social critic and lays out the specifics of how he weaves an artistic message into his games. He also reveals secrets for creating game worlds that have lasting fan cultures and stand the test of time.

Mike Mika has 20+ years game development experience. He helped launch NGMoco, pioneering some of the first free-to-play games for iPhone. He's run studios and played a major role in the shift to digital content distribution with Xbox Live and PSN. He has shipped over 190 games on every platform since the Game Boy, his most recent title, #IDARB was downloaded by over a million people in the first week of its release.

In this episode, Jason tells us about the birth of Execution Labs, elaborates on the specific phases of Venture Capital, and provides highly targeted advice for studios looking to pitch potential partners for capital or publishing.